Last November, literally at the exact same time as hundreds of protesters from Occupy Cal were marching against police violence in general and UCPD in particular, UCPD officers shot and killed UC Berkeley student Christopher Travis in the Haas School of Business. The District Attorney’s office has finally released a report on the killing that clears the officers of any criminal wrongdoing. In their statements, the police officers claim that the victim pulled a gun and pointed it at them; however, the video evidence doesn’t appear to show anything of the sort (pp. 17-18), and none of the 11 student witnesses corroborate the claim (p. 15).

According to a report from the National Consumer Law Center, “The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) relies on an increasing number of private contractors to collect the approximately $67 billion in defaulted federal student loan debt.” Moreover, not only is the government on the hook for an increasing number of student loan defaults, but it is paying outside collection agencies huge sums of money to collect these debts: “The Department paid contractors almost $1 billion in commissions in 2011.” Thus instead of providing free public higher education, the federal government is lending students huge amounts of money that they can never pay back, and the result is that the feds have to hire expensive private contractors to collect the cash.

UC Berkeley to collaborate with private developers to build student housing:
Private developers in the city of Berkeley have numerous options and requirements in order to provide some measure of affordability for a portion of the units in their projects.However, according to city Rent Stabilization Board Commissioner Igor Tregub, it is not mandatory for campus funded projects to align with the city’s affordable housing requirements. For that reason, he has concerns that private development will drive up the rent amounts in campus-provided housing.